The Sketch: Home Secretary shows us his qualities: he's flat, monotonous and thick

What a plank he is, really, I hope the French don't think we're all like him. The Home Secretary in the House yesterday had all the suave charm of high-density flooring material: flat, monotonous and thick. Those qualities are attractive in our close friends, but in a Home Secretary they are a danger to the public.

His statement on the closure of Sangatte, the French holding pen for asylum-seekers, should have been a triumph of its kind; it went off very badly for him in more ways than one. Not the least of which was his issuing a public plea to his department to do better. Much better actually. So much better that they'll never manage it. There is a rule in Parliament: whenever ministers say they want a "step change", or its slightly grander relation "a complete change in the culture", you know they're on a hiding to nothing.

Politicians are comically unable to get the wording changed on the landing cards that airlines hand out, let alone change a culture.

Oliver Letwin stood up to reply. Mr Letwin, you should know, has discovered a new way to do Parliament. He asks unexpected questions in a courteous way. Mr Blunkett finds it difficult to deal with these manners. He feels himself patronised but can't quite put his finger on the reason.

Mr Letwin began by observing that the camp, surely, was a symptom not a cause. Wasn't it set up because asylum-seekers were in northern France, rather than the other way round?

Then he asked on what legal basis Mr Blunkett's 1,000 Iraqis had been issued with work permits. If they had been eligible for them, why hadn't they been awarded them before the closure of the camp?

Then: "I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that the Home Secretary has been highlighting Sangatte for some time to distract attention from the numbers entering and remaining in this country, and the shambles that these numbers reveal," Mr Letwin observed sadly.

The shambles does, truly, offer a new definition of what shambolic might mean. Mr Letwin pointed out that 29,000 migrants arrived last quarter and just 3,500 unsuccessful seekers were sent away. He pointed out that 70 per cent of all asylum applications failed and if these numbers continued, in a decade there would be 700,000 illegal migrants living in Britain.

The Home Secretary repeated his call for Mr Letwin to join in condemning those who would halt all immigration. He talked of voices he heard raised louder and louder. Some of them close to the Conservative Party. Heard here, heard there! On the Today programme! In The Times! "And bordering, I have to say, from Anthony Browne [the journalist] on fascism!"

It was the most thoroughly disreputable thing that David Blunkett has said in the House. Venomous, ignorant and under privilege. Anthony Browne's immigration figures are very shocking – so much so that they demand to be heard and debated.

David Blunkett's legislative history has proposed or achieved the abolition of jury trials. The right of officials to view private internet histories. Asylum courts that hear appeals brought against their own judgments.

If you want to talk about bordering on fascism, that's the Sudetenland in 1938.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com